


otters in seaweed (don't go without me)

by OceanMyth



Series: Ocean's ATLA Drabbles, Oneshots, and Ficlets [10]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aang is a goofball, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Night Swim, Plotless Fluff, Post-Canon, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, goofballs in love, he brings out the goofball in katara, not really anchored to a specific time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:47:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26543956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OceanMyth/pseuds/OceanMyth
Summary: Katara can’t sleep on a full-moon night, and goes for a swim.
Relationships: Aang & Katara (Avatar), Aang/Katara (Avatar)
Series: Ocean's ATLA Drabbles, Oneshots, and Ficlets [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2113209
Comments: 13
Kudos: 91





	otters in seaweed (don't go without me)

**Author's Note:**

> Title based on the fact that sea-otters wrap themselves in kelp and hold hands to keep from drifting away.

The crickets are loud as Katara slips out of the bedroll she shares with Aang, almost like they are trying to get her caught. She feels the urge to hush them, but only realizes with a finger partway to her lips how absolutely ridiculous she would look if Aang woke up. 

Knowing him, he’d probably think her foolishness was cute, wind up telling their friends one night over a round of drinks, and she’d never live it down. Their friends—and her brother—are not nearly as sweet as Aang.

Aang frowns when she slides out from under his outstretched arm. She watches his face carefully when he shifts, curling his empty arm into the spot she just left. He doesn’t stir any, but the frown remains on his face, like he knows that she’s missing. Which is silly, since he’s asleep, but she finds herself smiling at him nonetheless. 

She would have preferred to remain there, sleeping by his side, but Katara knows that she won’t be sleeping tonight. She never slept well on full-moon nights _before_ , and it had only gotten worse after she’d been broken— and she can almost hear Aang’s reprimand, his gentle reassurance that she is stronger for her experience, but she can _feel_ his blood calling to her like the pulsing of the ocean. So she slips away from his warm body, and puts empty space between them.

Katara rises from the bedroll, leaving Aang sleeping alone.

Away from the warm orange glow of the embers, the moon bathes the world in pale silver-blue. It’s the color of Yue’s eyes, and the moon is bright overhead, and a stray thought passes through her head—perhaps these nights can be a chance for her to get to know the sister she’d almost had, if she’s always awake.

The cool light guides her towards the ocean ahead, and Katara flows between the trees, nearly tumbles over the cliff, drips down over the rocks to the little sandy beach she’d seen on Appa’s descent.

The little sandy beach, which may or may not have been the reason that she’d begged Aang to let them camp here for the night, is tucked between two large black rocks, the sand strewn with driftwood and seaweed. Katara’s toes dig into the sand—she doesn’t know when she’d taken her shoes off, her mind is clogged by the moonlight and the call of the water— but she also doesn’t care, because she’s shucking off the rest of her night-clothes to reveal her undergarments, and the salty breeze raises goosebumps along her skin. Her clothes land in a disorganized heap on the beach.

Stepping into the water feels like coming home.

She splashes her way out into the waves, first running as fast as she can, then awkwardly stepping with high knees— just because she’s a waterbender doesn’t mean she’s any better at wading through thigh-deep water than anyone else, though that would be a useful waterbending form if she can figure it out— and finally diving into a breaking wave, and pulling herself further out to sea.

The pounding of the waves is in her ears, and the moon’s light disappears behind a cloud, and then it is just her in the night, a dark shape in dark water, racing out deeper into the bay. 

She swims until the cliffs are a smudge on the horizon, then she floats there, face turned up to the countless stars in the sky. After a moment, Katara sinks down into the saltwater, submerging herself. The returning moonlight traces her cheekbones, catching against her eyelashes and the tip of her nose like the last snowfall before spring. She closes her eyes, and floats there, suspended, held and cradled.

The call in her blood subsides, soothed and smoothed away by the waves, like the jagged edges of glass.

She swims back toward the shore. Each stroke pushes her further than it would if she was not a waterbender, and Katara is reminded of one warm afternoon during the last days of the golden summer following the end of the war. She’d gotten Zuko to race her from the beach on Ember Island to the dock along the shore. Him on land, her in water. She’d beaten him— by a lot— and Sokka had been entirely too smug for someone who had only stopped taking her up on summer swimming competitions _that year_. 

She’s soon within view of the cliffs again, and it doesn’t take her much longer to be able to stand again. She regains her footing on the soft sand, before reaching up to untangle her hair. She hadn’t thought to tie it back before making her way into the water, and she regrets that decision as she tugs at a particularly stubborn knot.

Something grabs her ankle.

And Katara _shrieks_ , splashing backwards, stumbling, falling down into the surf, scrambling backwards as fast as she can because _what in the spirits was that?_

The answer, apparently, is her husband. 

Aang rises out of the water draped with seaweed, wriggling his arms like a fool, fists full of yet more seaweed, and Katara can hear the way his breathing hitched in order to hide a giggle.

“Beware! I am the Cove-Creature!” he says, and Katara wants to groan because he’s _such a goofball_ , but she’s still trying to calm her heart rate.

“Aang!” she sputters, because that’s about all her frazzled brain could put together. And she’s still flat on her arse in the surf, and now he’s doubled over laughing, and if returning to the water felt like coming home, this felt like family, like love, like everything else that makes home— _home_.

And the man who makes her feel all these things is standing in the shallow water, waves lapping at his thighs, doubled over laughing, covered in seaweed. Katara can’t help herself— she starts giggling.

He holds out his hand to help her up, and she smiles as she grabs it. Aang narrows his eyes suspiciously at her from under the mop of seaweed on his head, but it’s too late. Katara yanks him down, sending a particularly powerful wave at his feet with her other hand, and it’s worth it to see the look of surprise and delight on his face, even if it results in her getting a mouthful of seaweed when he lands in her lap.

“I couldn’t sleep without you,” he whispers, and she pushes the mass of seaweed off of his head— it falls into the water with a soft plop, dragging some of the stuff on his shoulders with it— and hooks her arm around the back of his neck, thumb rubbing over the blue trailing up the back of his neck. 

Perhaps he’s too tall for this position to be comfortable for long, but Aang’s eyes drift closed and his forehead presses gently to hers, and she is once again struck by how long his eyelashes are. 

“Really? You seemed plenty peaceful when I left,” she says, and his arm loosens around her waist. He shifts like he’s going to pull away, and she clings tighter, but then all he does is slide off her lap, and pull her onto his legs instead. He leans back from her a little bit, and his eyes start to do the thing where they look like the eyes of an orphaned tiger-seal pup: big and wide and soft and vulnerable.

“I _always_ miss you when you're gone. Even if I was sleeping when you left, I knew there was something wrong, and you were gone, and I missed you. ‘S why I woke up.”  
  
  
“Oh, I see,” she scoops up one of his hands, sets it on her cheek, holding it there for a second, leaning into his touch more than she’d consciously admit to. 

“Well. I’m here now,” she says, letting go of his hand, which doesn’t move from her face, as he smiles at her. Aang rubs his thumb across her cheekbone, tucks some of her hair behind her ear. His beautiful grey eyes are so _very_ close to her.

“I know,” he mutters, forehead again pressed to hers, except this time _her_ eyes are closed, and her heart is fluttering in her chest, because even though they’re married, he’s still able to make her feel like a girl, newly in love with the whole world all over again.

Then he kisses her there, underneath the full moon, in the place where sky and surf meet. They are both covered with seaweed, but Katara thinks that it might be their most romantic kiss.

That is, until the next time they kiss. 

And the time after that. 

And maybe ‘most romantic kiss’ is more a temporary, transitory title than it should be— but she spends each day falling more and more in love with Aang—maybe it's a title made to challenge, a title that promises that for the next day, and every day after, things just will only get better.

  
So maybe it’s just their most romantic kiss _yet._


End file.
